IN THE REVIEW

Neo-classicism

by Hugh Honour

On Neoclassicism

by Mario Praz, translated by Angus Davidson

“For a hundred years, sir, the world was humbugged by the so-called classical artists.” So claimed an outraged Thackeray, when surveying the modern French school of painting in his Paris Sketch Book of 1840. “The intolerable, stupid classicalities,” he explained, “only weighted the pupils down, and cramped their hands, their …